The blog for news, events, releases and commentary from Castle Perilous Games & Books. located in downtown Carbondale IL. New posts every Monday and Wednesday.

Monday, April 20, 2015

How to Encourage Me Not to Carry Your Game

The main reason we stock a game is customer demand. If customers ask for a game, we will try to get it, although sometimes it is just really really difficult (Superfight, I'm looking at you). However, if there is little to no demand for a game but we think we might see some in the future, we will consider stocking it. However, there are two things a publisher can do in this situation to really kill our interest in an individual game or their product line as a whole:

1) Use Kickstarter over and over and over (and over). oh and by the way, add on promos and special items to backers that make the game more enjoyable and playable or just cooler that stores won't have access to once the product launches (if ever) into distribution. This attracts most of the people interested in your game and, especially if you are a small publisher, means the majority of my customers for your product already bought it.

2) Short discount your product. Discounts (the difference between what a store pays for a product and what we sell it to the consumer) average somewhere between 40% to 50% when a store buys direct or through distribution. If the discount on your product falls below 40%, you have to make a very compelling case why stores should allocate scarce capital to bring in your game, rather than one that could do equally well, if not better, and generate more profit for the store. For that matter, why should I just not take that money and invest it in Magic or dice, which I know will sell and generate a profit.